by Duncan Epping
Duncan Epping · ·
Long before people ever heard about the VI Toolkit the ESX Healthcheck ruled the earth. The ESX Healthcheck script used the esxcfg-* commands in the Service Console and dumped all the info into a html file.
Today a new version of ESX Healthcheck has been released(0.30) after two years of silence. It has taken them a long time but it’s worth it in my opinion. Anders is looking for people that want to help out developing the script, so if you are interested leave Anders a comment on his blog.
Duncan Epping · ·
As you know I did the final part of the VCDX certification in San Francisco during the VMware Technical Services vSummit. I wanted to share my experience with you so you know what to expect to a certain degree and more importantly get the word out in general.
The last part of the VCDX certification is the defense. In short: you will need to write a design, fill out the application and defend your design during a two to three hour session.
Although I can describe it in 30 words it is not as simple as it may sound. First of all your design needs to meet specific requirements. I can’t go in to the details unfortunately but when you receive an invitation you will receive all the prerequisites. Like me, most of you done numerous designs, but keep in mind it needs to be in English and so will your defense need to be. This is an extra barrier for many of the non- native speakers; I know it was for me.
The defense part:
75 minutes – executive overview and an in-depth design defense
30 minutes – design workshop
15 minutes – problem analysis
For the first 15 minutes, the executive overview, you can use a couple of slides. Like I said it’s an executive overview and its only 15 minutes so don’t go into the technical details, there’s no need for that share your experience and maybe tell about political issues for instance. These 15 minutes gave me the opportunity to get rid of my nerves.
The in depth design defense is self-explanatory I think. Just be prepared to get questions on every single aspect of your design, know it inside out and not only “what” and “how”, but especially “why”.
Next two are role-play based. The panel is the customer and you are the architect. By asking questions, white boarding, discussions you will need to solve an issue or come to a specific solution for the customer. This is something you can not really prepare. Although you may think you will have more than enough time, you will not have time enough. Time flies when the pressure is on. Keep in mind that it’s not the end result that counts for these scenarios, it’s your thought process!
I’ve read comments on the written exams; some thought they were too easy. I can promise you this will not be easy this is not a test you can study for and pass if you crammed all the details. You will need specific soft skills and a wealth of knowledge.
Good luck and enjoy the ride,
Duncan Epping · ·
Eric Siebert just added a poll to his website. This time it’s not Eric who picks the top 5 VMware blogs but it is you, the reader!
I have a hard time picking the top blogs from the many great ones that are out there. I initially started with a top 10 and recently expanded it to the top 20 as more and more blogs have started. In this post I outline my blog selection criteria for the top 20 and it’s no easy task for me to pick them and rate them in order….
Now head over to Eric’s blog and pick the top 5. I’ve already voted! Results will be published at the end of the month.
Duncan Epping · ·
A couple of weeks ago I published an article on the maximum amount of VMs one could run on a ESX host. In short; if you enabled HA on your cluster it restricts the amount of VMs you can run on a host depending on the total amount of hosts in the cluster. This means that depending on your consolidation ratio you would need to limit the amount of hosts in a cluster.
Now, there might be another argument to take a good look at your cluster size. Site Recovery Manager. Currently vCenter 2.5 does not allow to simultaneously boot more than 16 VMs.
I’ve always been under the impression that the limit for SRM was 8 simultaneous boots but one of my colleagues notified me that the limit is actually 16. If all you care about is a low RTO, 16 would be a good cluster size wouldn’t it? There’s no point in having more than 16 hosts in a SRM enabled cluster if you don’t need the resources. However, don’t forget to take the HA “limitation” in account when designing your environment for availability.
Duncan Epping · ·
I just wanted to access my ESX 4.0 server via https. Unfortunately I received a “503 Service unavailable” error. First I checked if the service was running:
service vmware-webAccess status
It wasn’t running so I started it:
service vmware-webAccess start
But why did this happen? Well page 7 of the vSphere Web Access Guide revealed it. As of ESX 4.0 this service has been disabled by default. If you do however need it on a regular base it might be a smart thing to enable it:
chkconfig --level 345 vmware-webAccess on